# 2009 Tormaresca "Neprica" Puglia wine review



## Desertlifter (Feb 22, 2011)

Picked this up at Costco a few weeks ago for giggles - it's Italian, it's cheap, it's from Puglia. I had to have it. Fast forward to this evening, when I finally had a chance to open this up.

The wine immediately spoke well for itself - a triune blend of negroamaro, primitivo, and cabernet sauvignon. It's color absolutely comes from the negroamaro/cab side, with deep purples that run to the ridges and little clearing at the edges of the glass. It is medium in leg at most, although what leg it shows does linger on the glass. To the nose you will find the raspberry, touch of cherry, and light pepper that you expect with anything cab, but not a trace of oak - this wine is produced solely in stainless and the bottle.

Mouthfeel throws you a bit of tannin that the nose would predict with the pepper, but nothing ontoward. This wine could use a couple of years to leech, or if you like a bit of bite go for it - it doesn't bomb the senses at all, and the acidity/tannin level is low enough to allow for a meal of some refinement. It wouldn't blow out lighter cheeses by any means. Nonetheless, the tannin level does detract from a wine that went through a malolactic ferment - at least according to the website. Their is only the faintest butteryness that one would expect from a wine thusly produced.

Overall this is a simple wine, and the cab helps that along. I would have liked to have more negroamaro in this blend to bring out the earthy tones of that grape, although the wine certainly gets its color from that piece of the blend. It drinks well and has a solid profile, but it leaves me wanting a bit for the wines of Puglia.

I'd say that it lets you dip a toe in the proverbial water, but since this is Puglia I suppose it must be the heel.


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